Day 19, Were All Caught Up!This One Was Inspired By DrawingWiffWaffles, Specifically A Video Where She

Day 19, we’re all caught up! This one was inspired by DrawingWiffWaffles, specifically a video where she re-drew art from her followers. At first glance I thought the thumbnail was a pond mermaid with lilypads on her head. It was actually an ocean mermaid with a seashell crown, but I thought I’d try drawing what I thought I saw at first. I’m really testing the limits of those novelty pencils! I think the biggest issue with them is that they’re so low-pigment they don’t scan or photograph well.

Merm no. 30 is a pyrosome! Pyrosomes are actually made up of thousands of tiny organisms, so her head and arms are not real body parts. Who knows why this colony decided to take the shape of a mermaid? It’s a mystery. I’m quite glad I’m doing these late, because this one took longer than I thought and I would have been sad to rush it!

Inktober 2019 : day 4 - pentel pocket brush and ink wash

Lottie wears her hair over that eye for a reason.

This one also snuck past my 90-minute time limit, I think it took just under 2 hours. I’m not as quick with the brush pen as I thought!

Day 18 is in biro because I was scared of falling behind again! I was out visiting friends and asked them what sort of mermaid I should draw, and they said a pike mermaid who lives in a moat. I think in hindsight I could have pushed the underbite a bit more and given her a really weird face.

Day 20 is a merman! One of the prompt lists had ‘merman’ for today, so I turned one of my male characters into a merm. (I haven’t been using prompts in general, but I look at the lists if I’m stuck for ideas.) I wasn’t sure about the spot colour so I scanned it before colouring as well. I’m still not sure which one looks better.

Day 10′s mermaid is a jellyfish, she can’t really see and just drifts in the current with the others. I am learning a lot with these mermaids. Today I learned that masking fluid lifts off pencil! The scan on the left is the original drawing, the one on the right had to be re-coloured with a different pencil because when I peeled off the mask all the blue came with it! TT_TT (Also the original blue didn’t scan properly, but that was just me not thinking ahead.) I’m complaining a lot but all these mistakes are actually really useful, it’s much better to learn these things on a random art challenge than a client piece!